Geelong, Victoria - 1954-2015

Geelong B Power Station

Geelong B Power Station was commissioned in 1954 on the Corio Bay foreshore, built to provide supplementary generating capacity closer to Melbourne and Geelong than the brown coal stations of the Latrobe Valley. The station was oil-fired, supplied directly from the Shell refinery at Corio via pipeline.

Oil firing gave Geelong B a different character to the coal stations of the Latrobe Valley. The turbine hall was cleaner in some respects, the combustion residue different. Workers operated the plant through the nationalised and then privatised eras of Victorian electricity generation, across 6 decades of shifting ownership and market conditions.

The station closed in 2015 as the economics of generation shifted. The Corio Bay foreshore site had always carried potential for redevelopment, and the closure opened that process. The turbine hall retained its full generating equipment between decommissioning and the subsequent site changes.

The window between closure and demolition is rarely long for industrial sites of this type on waterfront land. The photographs record the turbine hall in the period immediately after operations stopped.